Labor looking to lose 8-9 seats - Catsaras

Labor would not go close to winning the federal election on Saturday with a primary vote of 35 per cent, where one opinion poll has the government, a leading analyst says.

Results from the latest ongoing Newspoll, published in The Australian newspaper on Friday, shows Labor's primary vote has slumped three points to 35 per cent, while support for the coalition has risen to 44 per cent.

Greens preferences help the government to a 50-50 position on the two-party preferred vote.

The Newspoll canvassed views on Tuesday and Wednesday night, with final results from Thursday to be published in Saturday's weekend newspaper.

Andrew Catsaras, who has been analysing the campaign polls for Fairfax media, says the completed Newspoll and the final Nielsen poll, together with the latest Galaxy poll showing Labor ahead 52-48, will provide a better insight to the election outcome.

"When you take all four of those most recent polls together, they will give you an excellent guide as to what is likely to happen," he told ABC Radio on Friday.

But Labor would not come close to winning on a primary vote of 35 per cent, he said.

With Greens preferences, Labor could win if its primary vote rose to 38 or 39 per cent.

"One thing we need to remember is that no opposition has won government with less than 51 per cent of the two party preferred vote," Mr Catsaras said.

"To talk about the coalition getting up with 48 per cent ... is a bit of a stretch."

Mr Catsaras predicted Labor would lose eight or nine seats, based on the latest Newspoll and Galaxy poll findings.

If that prediction played out on Saturday, the Gillard government would have about 80 of the 150 seats in the new parliament.

The ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green, said the polls had been consistent throughout the campaign at around 50-50 Australia-wide.

“But the swing against Labor in NSW and Queensland is large enough to almost defeat the government on its own,” he told ABC Radio.

“The government might need to pick up seats in other states but the difficulty is there aren’t a lot of marginal seats in the other states.”

Internal ALP polling leaked on Thursday night shows the government faces the loss of 13 marginal seats in NSW and Queensland.

Mr Green said the Australian Greens would hold the balance of power in the Senate “no matter who wins the election”.

Newspoll boss Martin O’Shannessy said his surveys were detecting a softening in the Labor primary vote and a late swing back to the coalition.

“This leads us to believe that the final result nationally will be very close to 50-50 on a two-party basis,” he told The Australian.

“Labor appears to have lost as many as three points on their national primary vote to the coalition when compared to last weekend’s Newspoll.”

That was driving the change in the two-party vote nationally, Mr O’Shannessy said.

Coalition campaign spokesman Andrew Robb believes the election could be decided by the two or three or four per cent of voters still to make up their minds.

The fact that Ms Gillard was relatively untried as prime minister also could be a factor.

“Normally there’d be one (party leader) who’s been prime minister and they (voters) know that person,” he said.